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Hosted by Financial Advisor Coach, Ray Sclafani, "Building The Billion Dollar Business" is the ultimate podcast for financial advisors seeking to elevate their practice. Each episode features deep dives into actionable advice and exclusive interviews with top professionals in the financial services industry. Tune in to unlock your potential and build a successful, enduring financial advisory practice.
Ray Sclafani (00:00.366)
Welcome to Building the Billion Dollar Business, the podcast where we dive deep into the strategies, insights and stories behind the world's most successful financial advisors and introduce content and actionable ideas to fuel your growth. Together, we'll unlock the methods, tactics and mindset shifts that set the top 1 % apart from the rest. I'm Ray Schlaffani, and I'll be your host.
Transfers of Trust, passing the torch to tomorrow's team, lessons from a $10 million advisory team. You know, for this episode, let's call the firm I'm referencing, WYSIWYG Wealth Management, a high performing advisory team setting the standard for building a sustainable and scalable business. Generating more than $10 million in annual revenues, they serve high net worth families with an emphasis on delivering exceptional service and creating long-term value. What sets this
team apart, however, is its deliberate focus on developing the next generation of talent, transitioning to a team-based client service model and unlocking new growth opportunities. Their journey offers a roadmap of best practices, and I would say proven practices, for your own team to scale more effectively while building a lasting legacy. Okay, so here's a quick snapshot of excellence. The WYSIWYG team is young, energetic, and laser-focused on success.
Each team member is enrolled in an advanced certification program with various individuals working their way towards CFP, CFA, CPWA designations. They have written professional development plans, defined career paths, and a clear understanding of the skills, competencies, and experiences they will need to level up. Well, this didn't happen by chance. The firm's senior advisors are all committed to developing their team members
by acting as mentors and sponsors. Not only do these mentorships help foster stronger personal connections, they facilitate a sharing of knowledge and experiences that provide team members with the resources, preparation, and the opportunities that will be necessary for growth. It's a culture that's truly about learning and collaboration that better positions each of the team members and the team overall for long-term success.
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and then ensures that everyone's invested in the firm's future. Their idea of transfer of trust really caught me in a way that was really different. One of their most transformative changes was implementing this thing they call the transfer of trust. They've labeled it, they've named it, moving from a model where one single advisor served each client to one where the entire team is now involved. It's a shift that is essential for scaling any firm
that wants to continue serving wealthy families with increasingly complex needs. Rather than each advisor striving to maintain expertise across all areas of wealth management, this transfer of trust affords a far greater opportunity for individual advisors to build deeper knowledge and specialization from non-traditional asset classes to trust, tax, estate planning, even philanthropic contributions and giving strategies.
that their clients seek to develop. Notice they're redefining wealth management, not just as investment management, but much broader. And they're building specialty areas for each of the members of the team to add value, working in a more collaborative, interdependent way. The results, well, they've been nothing short of remarkable. Clients have not only embraced the transition, they've celebrated it. Clients responded enthusiastically when the senior advisors explained,
that by involving the next generation of leaders was a core element of their legacy planning. The firm receives consistently positive feedback about the firm's younger advisors going above and beyond to solve specific client challenges, their terrific work ethic, and their ability to connect with the next generation who will inherit the family wealth, helping to educate and prepare them to be capable stewards of wealth. Well, their younger advisors were ready, willing, and able.
to step into more prominent roles and embrace greater relationship responsibility. So when the team began this process, a few of the clients even asked, well, why the firm had held the next generation back for so long? Senior advisors were actually pretty surprised. Feedback validated the team's approach and then underscored the importance of deliberately making these types of transitions early. Clients feel reassured knowing that
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their relationships aren't solely tied to a single advisor, but shared across the entire team. Now, here's what's key. These relationships that are shared across the entire team aren't service and support functions, they're advisory functions. They're focused on building greater trust, continuity and confidence, not just with the team at large, but also seeing the next generation as advisors. That's a key distinction.
Rather than delaying the transfer of trust until an advisor is preparing to step away, an already unsettling time for many clients, this gradual approach allows trust to transfer and grow organically over time. This also has an unintended consequence of unlocking capacity. You see, as these transitions progressed, the senior advisors also discovered the invaluable benefits of their newfound freedom and capacity.
For the first time in years, they were able to think strategically about growth, the white space to plan for a bigger future. Their networks were now more robust, their expertise now more sharp, and they suddenly had more time to devote to business development and scaling. Recognizing this opportunity, I challenged the team with three specific assignments designed to help them turn this excess capacity into
actionable growth strategies. And wow, did they just take great advantage of these. Let me walk you through these three and I think they'll be incredibly helpful for you and your team as well. Number one, identify your highest total relationship value clients. The first assignment I gave them was to identify their loyal client advocates who consistently refer business or represent significant revenue. Loyal client advocates are typically those clients
who most actively engage with your firm, asking questions and offering feedback and recommendations. They understand the value you deliver and are willing and able to convey that value to others. To help quantify this, we developed a simple formula. It's the client revenue plus the revenue from the referrals that they received over the past three years, while adding that together as your total relationship value. The team identified the five highest TRV clients per advisor on the team.
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and then considered which five additional clients with maybe a little more attention could become top tier TRV clients, total relationship value clients. It's not just all about the numbers, by the way, it's about re-imagining client relationships as long-term growth opportunities and digging into the psychology behind what drives client loyalty, client satisfaction, and client engagement. By focusing on what truly matters to the clients beyond just assets under management, then the team can tailor
their approach to deliver personalized value, strengthen trust, foster deeper connections that elevate these relationships into lasting partnerships. So that was the first thing, identify your highest total relationship value clients and spend more time with them. Second, forecast your year ahead opportunities. I asked the team to focus on identifying opportunities within their existing client roster for the year ahead. What was really interesting is when I asked them to hit a button in their CRM system,
and stack rank all of the opportunities for the year ahead, the next 12 months, they couldn't do it. Their reporting just wasn't up to par. So clients likely experienced some money in motion event, such as selling a business, maybe selling a piece of commercial property, or maybe selling other significant assets. Clients liquidating company stock holdings or exercising options, substantial inheritances, or extracting equity from partnerships or business interests.
All these money in motion events, well, they weren't nearly well tagged in the system. Secondly, significant expected life events, any births, deaths, divorce, retirement, which might trigger a need for additional guidance and identifying other opportunities for proactive planning, such as business transitions or philanthropic goals. So forecasting these opportunities, every team's got to have an ability in their CRM system to hit a button.
and see all the organic growth opportunities with inside the existing client roster. So by quantifying these new potential revenue opportunities and assets for the year ahead, well, the team was then able to create a roadmap for achieving their growth goals. By quantifying these potential new assets and revenue opportunities for the year ahead, the team was then able to create a roadmap for achieving their growth goals by linking these forecasts to specific actions. That was number two.
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Number three was planning for your capacity. Finally, I challenged them to plan how to use their newfound capacity most effectively. This wasn't about filling time to be busy. It was about better aligning their time with their strengths and the firm's growth strategy. So they came up with four things. They said, we're going to deepen relationships with loyal client advocates. We're going to build more robust networks with centers of influence. We're going to join philanthropic boards or do some kind of community initiative.
And then we're going to start to write more thought leadership content to generate inbound marketing leads targeting the ideal clients we want to attract. That'll help us better build our brand. Well, how are you going to spend your excess capacity? This ensured the team approached with intention and strategy how they were going to fill this time. They use the time to strengthen existing relationships. They heighten the firm's image and reputation in the community rather than wasting it on non-revenue generating activities. And by the way,
They had a growth rate year over year in excess of 24%. There's an article that I find really helpful when it comes to teamwork. It's written by the Harvard Business Review. It's called The Secrets of Great Teamwork by Martin Haas and Mark Mortensen. And the article explores how today's teams are far more diverse, dispersed, digital, and dynamic.
And it highlights four key elements of effective teams. When I think of this WYSIWYG team and what they were going through in the transfers of trust, how to use their newfound capacity, how to serve clients in a more holistic wealth management way, this article jumped out at me. There were four things in this article I think they're really effective for elements of effective teams. The first was a compelling direction. See, the WYSIWYG's team's mission was to go beyond generating revenue.
They were committed to serving clients through a multi-generational lens, ensuring continuity and legacy, and their clear sense of purpose motivated them and reassured their clients, creating better alignment and focus. So compelling direction was key. The second is strong structure, ensuring that each team member has a defined role, professional development plan, clear expectations. That was true for WYSIWYG. This structure ensured that everyone knew how their work was gonna contribute
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to the team's overall success, which created greater collaboration and accountability. The third mention in this Harvard Business article was a supportive context. WYSIWYG provides its team with the resources, the training, the mentorship needed to thrive. In fact, senior leaders were committed to investing in the development of their people. By investing in certifications and coaching and offering hands-on learning opportunities, well,
their firm effectively empowered everybody on the team to assume greater responsibilities and do that in a confident way. Now, at ClientWise, we call this total team leadership. Okay, so the fourth is a shared mindset. So out of the article, the authors talk about the shift from me to we as transformative. Wizzy Wigg has cultivated a structure of shared responsibility and collaboration by moving to a team-based
service and advising model, ensuring clients and team members feel valued and supported. Team building exercises and programs such as ClientWise's Loan Range at a Leader for Teams program can be crucial in helping you implement and sustain these essential principles. Here's the bottom line. The WYSIWYG Wealth Management Team is a shining example of what's possible when you combine the power of teamwork with intentional growth strategies. Their success isn't just about talent.
It's about leveraging the collective strength of their team to deliver exceptional service and advice, build lasting client relationships, and seize new opportunities because they do three things well. They invest in the next generation. They transition deliberately. They leverage capacity strategically. As the most significant wealth transfer in history continues to unfold and accelerate over the next few decades,
The firms that think strategically and act boldly will be the ones that light the way. For the WYSIWYG team, that future is very bright, with the best for them truly yet to come. The only question is whether or not your business is ready to follow their lead. Here are three coaching questions that you and your team might consider after listening to today's episode. First, how will you ensure the transfers of trust in your firm are successful and not just a handoff?
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from one advisor to another, that would be failure. Second, what actions will you take to uncover what truly matters to your clients and align your services and advice and guidance to help them achieve their most important goals? And third, what innovative approaches will you implement to anticipate and exceed client expectations, turning satisfaction into unwavering loyalty and advocacy? Well, thanks for tuning in and that's a wrap.
Until next time, this is Ray Sglafani. Keep building, growing and striving for greatness. Together, we'll redefine what's possible in the world of wealth management. Be sure to check back for our latest episode and article.
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